Norway moves diplomatic delegation from Venezuela to Colombia

The Norwegian Government has decided to close its embassy to Caracas, Venezuela, in 2013 and open again its diplomatic delegation to Bogota, Colombia, Norway Foreign Ministry has informed.

"In the light of the economic and political evolution in the region, and the level of insecurity in Venezuela, the embassy to Caracas will be closed in order to reopen the embassy to Bogota," the ministry informed on the plans of the diplomatic delegation.

3. Ley y Orden Is A Concern, Whether Pols And Ideologues Care To Admit It

Law and order is a concern to millions of ordinary people--from impoverished campesinos and slum-dwellers well up the social ladder, falling just short of that richest portion of society that lives behind gated walls with armed guards and bullet-proofed cars. You don't have to be lighting black candles and sacrificing goats to attempt to affect the resurrection of Richard Nixon, Rafael Trujillo, or Francisco Franco to be worried as to whether street crime or the bombings, shootings, and killings of narco-traffickers might affect YOU personally.

I am old enough to remember the old New Left's flirtation with ordinary criminals being thought of as some way to spread revolutionary thought and grow the left. Most of us came to realize that street criminals are street criminals, and that the overwhelming majority of the ones the New Left was trying to convert into revolutionaries still had no social conscience.

4. US Embassy issues violent crime warning for Bogota .

The United States Embassy issued a travel warning to U.S. citizens about violent crime in Colombia, and more specifically Bogota.

The emergency message for U.S. nationals specified the affluent Zona Rosa, Zona T, and Parque 93 areas in northern Bogota as particularly susceptible to violent crime. According to the warning, many of these crimes occur between 11PM and 3AM.

The statement confirmed the violent attack of an embassy employee who was stabbed by three Colombians around the intersection of Calle 85 and Carerra 10. While the employee did not sustain life threatening injuries, the embassy would like to remind U.S. citizens about the "willingness of criminals to utilize violence to perpetrate their crimes."

In a separate incident, several embassy workers were the victims of robbery after they were drugged with scopolamine, a toxin used notably in Colombia.

The embassy recommended that U.S. citizens follow the restrictions of embassy employees to decrease their risk of violent crime. This includes frequenting the “Galerias” District and the “Plaza de las Americas” District, which are off limits to embassy employees.

The mayor of Bogata has imposed a night-time curfew on minors to clamp down on child prostitution and reduce crime rates in the Colombian capital.
Under the new rules, which came into force on Wednesday night, any children under the age of 16 caught out on the streets between 11pm and 5am will be arrested by police.

Any bars selling alcohol to minors will be fined over $1,000 for every child served.

More than 20 Bogota tourist businesses have signed onto "The Code," a UNICEF-backed initiative that trains employees to spot signs of child prostitution and report it, the city's highest tourism official said Thursday.

Luis Fernando, director of the District Tourism Institute, told Colombia Reports the city wanted to train 120 businesses using The Code in the next four years.

The idea of the project is to increase the amount of people beyond law enforcement who are able to recognize child exploitation and prevent it. "We're looking for more support from the private sector," Fernando said.

Bogota hotels that opted into the initiative, for example, received training from the city's tourism police for all levels of their staff, from managers to baggage handlers.